Vote early and vote often

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published a story today about Carnegie Mellon faculty member Julie Downs' purchase of one of Allegheny County's suddenly antiquated lever voting machines. Twenty-four Pennsylvania counties used the lever machines until the federal Help America Vote Act-passed by Congress in the wake of the Florida recount during the 2000 presidential election-mandated computerized voting systems.

Electronic voting machines made their debut locally in the May primary, and they are being used for the first time today in several states across the U.S. The Pittsburgh City Paper recently dove into the controversy over electronic voting with this article, which featured the opinions of a couple of Carnegie Mellon computer science professors, David Eckhardt and Michael Shamos.

Julie Downs, incidentally, is the head of the Center for Risk Perception and Communication in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences. Her research examines human decision-making, and recently she has focused on adolescent sexual behavior. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review published this article in January about one of her recent studies.

Jonathan Potts